Plant Oil Powered

Biomass has great potential as a clean, renewable feedstock for producing modern energy carriers. This paper focuses on the process of biomass gasification, where the synthesis gas may subsequently be used for the production of electricity, fuels and chemicals. The gasifier is one of the least-efficient unit operations in the whole biomass-to-energy technology chain and an analysis of the efficiency of the gasifier alone can substantially contribute to the efficiency improvement of this chain. The purpose of this paper is to compare different types of biofuels for their gasification efficiency and benchmark this against gasification of coal. In order to quantify the real value of the gasification process exergy-based efficiencies, defined as the ratio of chemical and physical exergy of the synthesis gas to chemical exergy of a biofuel, are proposed in this paper. Biofuels considered include various types of wood, vegetable oil, sludge, and manure. In this study, exergetic efficiencies are evaluated for an idealized gasifier in which chemical equilibrium is reached, ashes are not considered and heat losses are neglected. The gasification efficiencies are evaluated at the carbon-boundary point, where exactly enough air is added to avoid carbon formation and achieve complete gasification. The cold-gas efficiency of biofuels was found to be comparable to that of coal. It is shown that the exergy efficiencies of biofuels are lower than the corresponding energetic efficiencies. For liquid biofuels, such as sludge and manure, gasification at the optimum point is not possible, and exergy efficiency can be improved by drying the biomass using the enthalpy of synthesis gas. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

What happens if you overheat vegetable oil or sugar in your kitchen? Vegetable oil smokes and turns brown and sugar turns black. Both of these are caused by decomposition because oil and sugar will not evaporate, so they decompose to form carbon. Schmidt and his students have found that, if you heat vegetable oil or sugar approximately one million times faster than you can do in your kitchen, they form no carbon at all, but rather form hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This gas mixture is called synthesis gas because it can be used to synthesize interesting fuels and chemicals such as synthetic gasoline. Since the mixture can be formed from biomass, this process can produce completely renewable fuels and chemicals. This is the basis of a paper recently published in Science magazine.

Gasification is the general term used for processes where heat is used to tranform solid biomass into a "natural gas like" flammable fuel. Through gasification, we can take nearly any solid biomass waste and convert it into a clean burning, carbon neutral, gaseous fuel. Whether starting with wood scraps or coffee grounds, municipal trash or junk tires, the end product is a flexible gaseous fuel you can burn in your gasoline engine, cooking stove, heating furnace and/or flamethrower. Apply a little additional effort and various liquid and solid fuels are possible too.

Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines in a Petroleum emergency